News from the Bellbrook High School newspaper class

How to Organize Your Planner

by Emily Bunsold

All students at every Bellbrook school in the district are given an agenda to keep themselves organized and on track during the course of the school yea; but the one of the main problems that arise with having the responsibility to keep track of your agenda, and everything that goes in it, is that students just don’t know how to keep it clean and easy to read. I, too, have gone through countless numbers of planners for school and for planning out my day-to-day activities, so I have tried any and all ways, methods, and ideas on how to keep it most organized, and I think I finally found the most effective solution.

First, I’ll just give you an overview of what my planner will usually look like at the end of every week. As you can see, the colors black, red, and blue are pretty much throughout the entire planner. I’ll explain the color-code below.

Blue is the color I use for all of my extracurricular clubs or activities. I will write a the very top of my agenda in the boxed area all the activites I have planned for the week. I add more as the week goes on. When I first started using this method and writing these things at the top instead of in the lined area below the box, I would just forget that I had something going on a certain day, even though I wrote it in the box. So I started starring in blue next to the day of the week that I had a certain club meeting that day. As you can see, I put a blue star next to Monday because, as it says in the box, I had a Key Club meeting.

Black is the color I use for everyday assignments like worksheet, notes, or reading homework.

Red is probably the most crucial color for my agenda. When I see something that’s written in red, I know that I’m going to have a test, quiz, or project due that day. Right when one of my teachers tells me that we will be having a test, I instantly write it down in my agenda. In addition, I will also write “study for ____” for the day before in black so that I know that I MUST study that night for my test the next day.

And finally, if I have a project or essay that’s assigned at the beginning of the week but isn’t due until the end of the week, I’ll write the certain assignment on the day that it was given, and draw a line to the due date. That way, I won’t be clogging up the rest of the days writing “work on project, work on project, work on project.”